All I want to do is listen to my MP3 collection on my TiVo...

[jenlatham]

I'm a bit frustrated that something so seemingly "simple" seems so difficult. I'd love to get some help as to what I'm doing wrong.

I have a fairly substantial MP3 collection (3855 songs, 23.58GB according to iTunes) on my PC. Bitrates range from probably 128kbps to 320kbps and some at high quality VBRs. I've been fairly diligent to strip any "special" characters from filenames and ID3 tags because I know that's a trouble causer for TiVo. Music is primarily organized into folders with a top level folder for artist and then subfolders for each album. I've got 1719 subfolders total, with 112 at the top level and the rest one level below, within my Music folder.

My overall goal is to be able to completely shuffle my entire MP3 collection or shuffle within a specific artist (which my folder structure supports). I don't seem to be able to do this.

I'm running TiVo Desktop v2.5.1 (279957) on my XP system. My TiVo errors when I try to play my entire music folder; based on my reading online, it seems like TiVo Desktop can't handle a substantial music collection.

So I've also tried Galleon. v2.3.0 regularly crashes with "Uncaught Exception: Out of Memory" errors. So I just tried v 2.5.0. The Music Organizer would play one song, then exit straight to live TV with nary an error or warning. Not to mention that the display on my TiVoHD looked TERRIBLE (tiny letters at the edges of my screen, 95% of the screen blank). My frustration goes up a few levels. The forums at Galleon.tv won't let me log on, throwing me to a screen saying my IPs been blacklisted (and I have no clue why). And even if I could log on, it looks like most posts get no answers to their problems, and the bug list at SourceForge is as long as anything with nary a solution in site.

Am I the only person trying to do this? Any suggestions with the applications I've already tried, or a better one that will actually work reliably and successfully? Help please!

[alansplace]

a while back i had (actually i still have) the same problem with a much smaller library. several people contributed to the thread that i started when i asked for a solution to the problem. nobody had one. it seems that there is a limit to the number of mp3s that you can play with one command at the root directory of the library. what that limit is, i don't know but i can tell you that i can't do what you're trying to do with the 1439 selections in my library.
--
Alan :D

[wmcbrine]

I can press "Play" on my pyTivo mp3 share, and promptly get it playing "1 of 2075". I have not sat through it to see if it will really play all 2075. :D

This is with my version of the music module (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5825574#post5825574)... startup was much slower with the original, although I think it would still work.

[erikg]

I also use Tivo Desktop 2.5.1 with a Plus key on a windows vista home premium box and my mp3 collection is currently at 205 gigs has no problems being played. I made sure to add the tivo desktop to my firewall so it is allowed and it streams fine. The only thing differently I can think of is maybe the structure of the files?

I sort mine by artist and then album

Artist1\Album1
Artist1\Album2
Artist2\Album1
Artist3\Album1

This is with over 981 artists in the root of the drive and over 55,000 mp3s. Now I don't try to play everything at once but if I selet an Artist I have no problems. So check your firewall/antivirus and try sorting ? Oh and make sure nothing is copyright either.
Whats your computers specs? 1gig of ram 2gigs?

[Boscomail]

I am running XP and have about 7300 songs in my MP3 collection. I recently had trouble with the problem you described when I updated my TiVo Desktop software to 2.51 and the newer version of Galleon. What I ended up doing is going back to TiVo Desktop 2.4a and Galleon 2.41. For whatever reason, I have not had any problems with this combination. No more "out of memory" or having my TiVo reboot during the middle of a song. I have been able to randomly play all MP3s in my collection this way (the longest I've tested this is about 6 hours).

Good luck.

[wmcbrine]

Now I don't try to play everything at onceThat is actually the issue being discussed: the ability to play "everything at once". This invokes a recursive listing, which really bogs down in Tivo Desktop, and may fail to work.

It's not that people really want to play everything, either; but if you're using Shuffle mode, then you probably want the largest possible pool to draw from. (BTW, I just found out that shuffle is broken in my module -- will be fixed in the next version.)

[jenlatham]

OK, lots of good responses!

wmcbrine:
So I tried setting up pyTiVo. (Had to stop Tivo.Net to make the evil errors go away in my Python Shell). It worked to play one of my artist subfolders, but I couldn't play my entire collection. It thought for a minute (and I was thinking "Slow is OK...") but then "An unexpected error occurred while accessing the server. Error# 1-0-65535." I'm wondering if I have done something wrong, I'll revisit my pyTiVo setup.

erikg:
My MP3 collection is structured identically to yours. As wmcbrine commented, I want to shuffle the top level. I can successfully play an artist folder via TiVo Desktop. If I try to play the root, I get "A problem occurred while accessing the server. This may be a temporary problem due to a network interruption or the server being busy. If the problem persists, check your network connections and verify that the TiVo Server application is running on your computer." Firewall ports are opened and I don't think my AV is at issue. My system specs are an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ processor with 2GB of RAM on XP Pro SP2. I have no plus key on TiVo Desktop. No copyrighted MP3s or other file formats in my collection either.

Boscomail:
Thanks for the suggestion. I hadn't tried Galleon 2.41. I'll try that combination of TiVo Desktop and Galleon and report back.

And just to clarify...I don't want to play ALL my music. (That would take 12.3 days!) I just want to be able to shuffle from the entire collection it all while listening to it for a few hours. As it stands right now, I can't listen to anything for a few minutes (if that).

Thanks all for the responses... At least I feel like there's a glimmer of hope!

[wmcbrine]

It thought for a minute (and I was thinking "Slow is OK...") but then "An unexpected error occurred while accessing the server. Error# 1-0-65535."Is this with the latest version of my module, or pyTivo's original?

[jenlatham]

Is this with the latest version of my module, or pyTivo's original?

My first attempt was with the original. I just retried with the version of your module you linked to. I was able to play the root with shuffling off (and saw 1 of 38xx, a good sign). When I turned it on I got error 1-5-6. When I exited and re-entered, I got the standard "A problem occurred..." blah blah I quoted earlier.

[renkablue]

I found a post in the TIVO forum about AudioFaucet. It is installed on my computer and the TIVO is playing my MP3's even as I type this post. I have noticed while it is playing it doesn't time out and go to live TV like when I use Tivo Desktop. I like this application. Galleon's earlier version was a better app than the newer version as far as I am concerned.